inch by inch your heart is an empty room
by WonderTwinC
Summary: He expected they would have more time, really. He did not count on Regina having such a powerful weapon. Dark!Belle.


My first attempt at tackling something so long, and also so... dark? This is also a prompt fill for about a thousand prompts. Not really, but close. Also thank you to the beautiful and wonderful Laura for proof-reading over the final version, and to everyone who read bits and pieces of it as I worked through it.

cartography, hand stamped brass and silver - accio firewhiskey  
blood, sanctuary - word prompts  
velodrome, leafier, cared, nearness, plead - rumbelle war

* * *

_inch by inch; your heart is an empty room_

He expected they would have more time, really.

Emma has only just begun to realize that Henry's stories are more real than fantasy. People are slowly waking up from the hold of the Curse. Bits and pieces of memories are resurfacing here and there but the whole ordeal is something that doesn't happen overnight and it is going to take time. He thinks there should be more than enough time left to them.

He did not count on Regina having such a powerful weapon. It is a weapon that is brought out in broad daylight to be put on display under such an unassuming disguise. He is a man left breathless in the harshest of ways.

He would equate the feeling to someone running him through with his own dagger, but somehow even that doesn't seem to express how he feels when he comes to a standstill on the sidewalk just across from Granny's diner.

There is barely a glimpse of brown hair bathed in sunlight before she disappears around the corner, but it is altogether too much and not enough.

Rumpelstiltskin has carefully mapped out every single inch of this town and the citizens within it over the twenty-eight years that this place has been called home. He knows everything about the blue sky above and the concrete beneath his feet. He knows every single person.

What he does not know is _her_. She is a mystery to him as she has been for so many years before this. He has charted out every tree, person and place and yet somehow he has missed _her_.

_He has mapped every inch of this god damned town, every inch except for her._

* * *

He sees her in passing, through different windows and around every corner. In the town of Storybrooke she is a bodyguard to the Mayor; the right hand to the woman in black. She stands with more backbone than he remembers, but the tilt of her chin is forever that of a princess. Her lips are as red as blood and match those of the Queen whose company she keeps. There are many things she is not in this town but there are a handful of things she is.

The girl is beauty and death wrapped together tightly into one being that is as lovely as a rose but with a substantially more lethal sting than any thorn. She is cold and quiet and so very dangerous to anyone who dares to opposite her lady.

To the citizens of Storybrooke, however, this darkness does not have a true name.

_She is not Belle._

Here they call her Avalon.

_She is the island of death and paradise._

Rumpelstiltskin grins and bears it.

_She is not his._

He has walked this world for two decades and never has he encountered an enchantress such as her. The Queen is deadly, no doubt. Regina has her power and her tricks and a secret in the tips of her fingers. Avalon, _Belle_, keeps her secret tucked in the corner of her blood red lips and that makes her the danger he cannot dare to keep close.

_Yet she is the one with the smile full of care that he can never extinguish from his dreams._

* * *

She sneaks up on him, of course, as Belle was always prone to do.

He is leaving Granny's diner when he sees her three steps ahead with her arm tucked through that of what would be her gallant fiancé Gaston.

_In this life he is George and he has nothing except the job with Hansel and Gretel's father._

He has yet to see her smile in this world, and even now the quirk of her lips directed to the oaf at her side is not a smile. It is a barely concealed grimace that she plays well with her fingers digging into the crook of his elbow.

There is a moment, fight or flight as they all say, but he is a coward and fight has never been an option. Rumpelstiltskin turns to flee back into the diner, but her eyes catch hold of his and he is snared like an injured deer. Her eyes hold so much shadow (_anger, hate, strength)_ it crushes the breath from his lungs.

Belle _smiles._

It is full of scars and flames as her shoulder brushes against his chest to leave a bullet hole too large for him to feel. She does not hesitate to turn and offer a polite apology that could be for any stupid person she happens to brush against. There is a secret in the way her composure never falters and how she turns away from him without batting an eyelash while he is left burned to the bone.

Leafs and herbs have been used to heal burns, to help dull the pain. The best thing he has found in Storybrooke is bottle full of whiskey and the simple company of a chipped tea cup.

* * *

The world is unweaving around them.

He opens his front door one night to see Henry standing there with his book tucked tight to his chest. Towering above the boy is his mother in all of her red leathered stubbornness. The way she is looking at him, as though she isn't seeing a crippled pawn broker but a man, a _beast_, with so much power and so many different deals is all he needs.

Rumpelstiltskin guides them into his home and there a plan is set and made. Emma _knows_ her place in this battle and he reinforces that with biting words and well placed threats. If she does not come through for them all he will make sure there is no one for her at all. She withstands his words with a patience she has learned from her own mother and a strength that has come from years of surviving when no one was looking.

Snow remembers, as does her dashing Prince Charming, because that promise of finding each other extends beyond words and realms and_ curses_. There is more bite to Ruby when he sees her the next morning and behind her there is an old widow who would be of good aim whether armed with a cross bow or a set of razor sharp teeth.

They are the only few that remember, for they are the strongest of those trapped in his world. They are the set of keys he has been waiting to grasp and he takes no time in making sure Emma knows this as well. To win this they must play by his rules and his knowledge and for once the Sheriff doesn't argue or fight.

Regina never faces him directly in the days after Belle's reveal, but he receives a basket of apples on the front porch of his home one chilly morning when he is not looking.

Rumpelstiltskin turns them into toads and sends them back.

* * *

He digs.

Mr. Gold digs so deep that his knees give out beneath him and his hands bleed from the effort. He digs until there is blood and dirt until his fingernails and the best of his suits is ruined.

He digs and digs and digs until his bones plead for rest and his eyes are nothing more than glittering pools in the dark.

He digs.

There is a heart to be found with the name _Rumpelstiltskin_ on it, written in blood.

* * *

Belle has been a citizen of Storybrooke for twenty-two days and a handful of hours but never once has she stepped foot into his shop. She finds him in the back room of his store in the dying light of day.

She greets him with a smile that is razor sharp and eyes that are deep enough to drown in. "Miss me, Rumpelstiltskin?"

It is her voice, of course, but it doesn't sound like a symphony of bells anymore. Instead it sounds like a thousand dragons coming for his heart and he stares because _by god she remembers._

She is as silent as a viper as she walks the floor toward him, fingers brushing against each object she passes. Never does she look away from him, and never does the poisonous smile dim or falter. In this version of the fairytale she would be the beast and he would be the enchanted maiden (or not, but the sentiment is the same).

There is a gun in his pocket and a dagger in a drawer, but he reaches for neither. Whatever she has come for (his heart, his life, his _love_) will be freely given. Belle is close, and the image he has of her shimmers and shifts. Her auburn hair is nowhere near as lustrous as before because it is marred with a hundred different knots and dead ends. Her eyes are still blue, so very much, but they are no longer the bright blue of a mid-morning sky. Instead he is staring into the dark blue at the bottom of the ocean or perhaps the inky color of midnight.

The differences are startling, but she is still _Belle_ and even the scar he can see at the base of her jawline, one amongst many, does not make him love her any less. She is close now, closer than ever before (as close as she was the night they _burned_) and he stands there with white knuckles and aching hands.

"I believe I asked you a question, _dearie,_" her breath is warm against his face, but her words cold and precise. He tilts his head and grins back at her, leaning ever so close until their noses are almost touching.

"Welcome back home, _love_."

His words are as warm as stone in winter and she _smiles_ at him. Belle smiles and then her lips are brushing against his and she breathes fire into him. It sears the back of his throat in the most delightful way as his hands reach up to tangle in her hair. He is not gentle as his fingers curl in her auburn locks, keeping her in place to allow his teeth to assault her lower lip.

She tries to push him backwards, to gain the upper hand she has somehow lost, but Rumpelstiltskin snarls and shoves until her back slams against a shelf and trinkets come raining down around them. Glass shatters into a million pieces at their feet, reflecting up a thousand different images of their struggle for dominance.

Belle isn't winning but neither is she losing. Her hands are forcing away his clothing as if by magic and he feels the electricity against his skin as his jacket drops to the floor. His shirt rips open and buttons fly before her hands press hard to his chest, as if searching for something. He knows exactly what she is after and he presses her harder to the shelf, one hand curled around the side of her neck with his thumb caressing the underside of her jaw. Rumpelstiltskin tilts her head back until he can feel the steady throb of her pulse against his palm.

It is interesting how his maiden has a pulse when she does not even have a heart.

The rest of the shop fares just as well in their fight for power over one another. There are shattered bookcases and fragmented curios. A thousand different baubles litter the floor as he takes her over the desk just like he has fantasized about since the first time he laid eyes on her.

Belle is spread out on the desk before him, her pale skin contrasting beautifully to the dark mahogany in way that causes his blood to race. Her body reacts to each touch, _each thrust_, and he presses her harder into the wood.

She is _magnificent._

She arches beneath his body, growling out his name as his thumb passes over the pulse point in her neck to find the beating she should not possess. The thrum is impossibly fast beneath their skin and Rumpelstiltskin grins with all this teeth as she breaks beneath him.

There are no kind words of endearment exchanged as he presses forward until he has nothing left to give her.

They have circled the dirt track of what they have left for one another. He is all dragon as he pulls away and rights his clothing, teeth bared and body satisfied. Belle is the phoenix across the room that is burning whole as she repairs and rebuilds.

_They have committed suicide that feels like the hard lash of a scourging in the form of a kiss._

His arms are a broken sanctuary for the woman in front of him that has been shattered and repaired so many times that she is no longer quite a woman. She is hand stamped and polished yet more tarnished than any brass or silver set that he has ever had the pleasure of owning.

_She is a thousand times more precious at any rate_.

Belle does not have a heart of her own, and so he gives her his, tucked and protected in the leather of a sheath, and when she leaves it is with the words _Rumpelstiltskin_ pressed tightly into her palms.


End file.
